Putting a human face on Obamacare

Published 6:05 pm, Thursday, August 22, 2013

To the editor:

The Courier has been printing many letters from folks who support Ted Cruz’s effort to defund Obamacare but none of them, even Cruz, offers an alternative. Let me put a real human face on the debate. I have a young friend who lives in Porter. Based on our personal interactions, I affectionately call him the most honest man I ever met.

He never went to college but works hard and developed a skill. He got married, has children, a mortgage, a deer lease and was able to make enough money to take care of his family. He was living the American dream.

When he turned 30, like many young people, he decided to go out on his own so he could make more money and improve his family’s life. He signed up for a health insurance plan that aggregated small businesses into a group and provided coverage similar to larger businesses. The premiums were lower than he could get on his own and he did not have to go through a medical checkup, even though he was willing to be checked.

Everything was roses for a few years, then the great recession happened and business dried up. Having a skill and strong work ethic, he chose to close his shop and go to work for a larger company. He notified the heath insurance provider and said he wanted to keep paying his premiums until the benefits at his new job kicked in. He was told because he did not go through a medical screen, his policy was automatically canceled.

He had to wait a couple months for a new project to begin so he lived off his small saving and never took a penny from the government. Plus, at the new company, there was a 60-day waiting period for his new health insurance benefits to start. As luck would have it, two of his children had unexpected medical events. In one bad week, he woke up with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. His American dream had turned into a nightmare.

Because of the weak economy, he was not getting much overtime; and due to the medical bill payments, he was stretched and even had to take on a small amount of credit card debt to pay his monthly bills. The stress on his family was unbearable. He called a debt consolidation firm, which wanted $2,000 up front, which he didn’t have, to negotiate a new payment schedule. They even suggested he put the $2,000 on his credit card. Yikes!

So we were sitting around one day and he was telling me of his dilemma. I told him to stop making payment for a couple of months and then call the medical provider and negotiate his own settlement. He told me he always pays his bills and he did not want to stop payment. Finally out of desperation, he followed up on my idea. To his surprise, the medical provider, with one phone call, dropped more than $25,000 from his bill.

So why did the medical provider acquiesce so easily? Because they knew they can pass those costs on to patients with insurance. This is one reason medical insurance premiums have been rising for decades. This same timing event happens tens of thousands of times every year all over this country.

The Affordable Care Act has portability and precondition provisions that will ensure my friend will never face this horrible nightmare again.

So for all those folks who want to get rid of Obamacare, what are they proposing to prevent thousands of unlucky, honest, hardworking Americans from this fate? Or do they believe the health insurance industry treated my friend fairly and he deserved the suffering he experienced. I sure don’t.

Tim Doherty

Conroe

Leave health care where it belongs

To the editor:

Is anyone excited about the Internal Revenue Service having anything to do with our health care? The agency that has all of our financial information is now going to have access to all of our medical records as well. Why? So they can tell the death panel if we are worth saving or not?

Does anyone want to have a “central committee” (that is what they called it in the old Soviet Union before it fell apart) decide what you need in the way of health care? Does anyone want the “central committee,” whose members are to be appointed by politicians, to decide what is best for us in the way of health care and whether we even get health care and if we do, how much we will get?

What have our elected officials done to us in the name of affordable health care? I did not vote for one person who voted for this healthcare act, but I did vote for one person who is trying to do something about it, Ted Cruz, and perhaps to a lesser degree, Kevin Brady.

Ted Cruz has made a stir in the Democratic Republic of Washington, D.C., and I for one appreciate it.

Cruz has called on the Republican-controlled House to defund Obamacare. If Congress can’t get the Affordable Care Act repealed because the Democratic-controlled Senate won’t approve the repeal - and if they did, the president will veto it - then the Supreme Court has held that the House has the power to tax. The Supreme Court has held that Obamacare is a tax. And if it is a tax, then the House has the power to not fund it. The upcoming vote on extending the limits on the national debt is an excellent opportunity to cut out the funds for Obamacare.

Of course, if Obamacare should die on the vine due to the lack of funding and someone thinks there ought to be something in place to offer health insurance to the uninsured, then I say take the one page, 18 items that the president of Whole Foods came up with. It makes sense, it is not 20,000-plus pages and it leaves health care where it belongs, between the patient and the doctor.

Jim Howard

Conroe

No handouts: Just honesty and freedom

To the editor:

My wife and I were in attendance at the Ted Cruz event Monday night. There were over 600 people there, not 250. We came to see the next president of the United States, a fearless defender of the values that made America great.

Others according to the story in Tuesday’s paper came to show support for politicians who would bring home the bacon in the form of federal money for “infrastructure projects.” That is what is bankrupting our nation. Every locality, including Detroit, wants a handout from Washington along with all the strings.

All I want is to be left alone. I don’t want to finance the rest of the country and I don’t expect them to finance Montgomery County. All I want is honesty and freedom. Ted Cruz is dedicated to both.